Simondon Contra New Materialism: Political Anthropology Reloaded

This paper responds to an invitation to historians of political thought to enter the debate on new materialism. It combines Simondon’s philosophy of individuation with some aspects of post-humanist and new materialist thought, without abandoning a more classically ‘historical’ characterization of materialism. Two keywords drawn from Barad and Simondon respectively – ‘ontoepistemology’ and ‘axiontology’ – represent the red thread of a narrative that connects the early modern invention of civil science (emblematically represented here by the ‘conceptual couple’ Descartes-Hobbes) to Wiener’s cybernetic theory of society. The political stakes common to these forms of mechanical materialism were attacked ontologically, epistemologically and politically by Simondon. His approach, I will argue, opens the path for a genuine materialist critique of the political anthropology implicit in modern political thought, and shifts political thinking from politics conceived as a problem to be solved to politics as an arena of strategic experimentation.

Strategic Experimentation with Congestion

This paper considers a two-player game of strategic experimentation with competition. Each agent faces a two-armed bandit problem where she continually chooses between her private, risky arm and a common, safe arm. Each agent has exclusive access to her private arm. However, the common arm can only be activated by one agent at a time. This congestion creates negative payoff externalities. Our main finding is that congestion gives rise to new strategic considerations: players perceive a strategic option value from occupying the common arm, making it more attractive than in the absence of competition or when switching is irreversible. (JEL C72, C73, D62, D83)

Simondon (novo)materialismo? Um movimento para além do pensamento político moderno

This paper combines Simondon’s philosophy of individuation with some aspects of post-humanist and‘new materialist’ thought, while, at the same time, remaining within the ambit of a more classically ‘historical’characterisation of materialism. Two keywords drawn from Karen Barad and Simondon respectively – ‘ontoepistemology’and ‘axiontology’ – represent the red thread of a narrative that connects the early modern invention of civil science(emblematically represented here by the conceptual couple Descartes-Hobbes) to Wiener’s cybernetic theory ofsociety. The political stakes common to these forms of what I call ‘banal’ materialism, Simondon attacked ontologically,epistemologically and politically. The conceptual tools Simondon’s philosophy of individuation elaborates prove tosupport a ‘non-banal’ materialist critique of the alleged ‘unsocial sociability’ of human nature theorised in modernpolitical theory. A genuine materialist approach, as I will argue, allows us to shift political thinking from politicsconceived as a problem to be solved to politics as an arena of strategic experimentation.

Carrying on Samir Amin’s Legacy

Kagarlitsky argues, “The global defeat of the left has stimulated rapid corruption and degradation of the capitalist classes and, as a result, has aggravated all the contradictions and problems that the system faces. The collapse of the left movement has given rise to a more acute need for a socialist alternative than ever before in the past 50 years.” Yet, he notes that the situation for building left unity is now rather dire, as few countries have strong left parties and old left parties have lost their legitimacy and appeal. “[A] new political alternative can be neither invented nor constructed artificially or mechanically. Our task today is to collect and integrate the experience of the struggle (including the political one) accumulated in different countries. We are entering a period when bold strategic experimentation is needed.”

Strategic experimentation in queues

We analyze the social and private learning at the symmetric equilibria of a queueing game with strategic experimentation. An infinite sequence of agents arrive at a server that processes them at an unknown rate. The number of agents served at each date is either a geometric random variable in the good state or zero in the bad state. The queue lengthens with each new arrival and shortens if the agents are served or choose to quit the queue. Agents can observe only the evolution of the queue after they arrive; they, therefore, solve a strategic experimentation problem when deciding how long to wait to learn about the probability of service. The agents, in addition, benefit from an informational externality by observing the length of the queue and the actions of other agents. They also incur a negative payoff externality, as those at the front of the queue delay the service of those at the back. We solve for the long‐run equilibrium behavior of this queue and show there are typically mass exits from the queue, even if the server is in the good state.